This tutorial is an introduction to the Pascal simple, yet complete, introduction to the Pascal programming language. It covers all of the syntax of standard Pascal, including pointers.

I have tried to make things as clear as possible. If you don't understand anything, try it in your Pascal compiler and tweak things a bit. Pascal was designed for teaching purposes, and is a very structured and syntactically-strict language. This means the compiler will catch more beginner errors and yield more beginner-friendly error messages than with a shorthand-laden language such as C or PERL.

This tutorial was written for beginner programmers, so assumes no knowledge. At the same time, a surprising number of experienced programmers have found the tutorial a useful reference source for picking up Pascal.

We begin with some background on Pascal, an explanation of compilers, and step-by-step instructions for getting one such compiler working on a modern Windows operating system. The background section is informative reading, I'm told, for experienced programmers as well as novices, but the Contents will let you pick any topic if you're already familiar with programming.